Posted on 02/08/2006 2:00:13 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
BARRON, WI (AP) - A judge has upheld sanctions against a pharmacist who refused to dispense birth control pills to a college student and wouldn't transfer her prescription elsewhere.
Barron County Circuit Judge James Babler affirmed the punishment the state Pharmacy Examining Board handed down against pharmacist Neil Noesen. The board ruled last April that Noesen failed to carry out his responsibility to get the prescription to someone else if he wouldn't fill it himself.
The board reprimanded Noesen, of St. Paul, Minn., and ordered him to attend ethics classes. He will get to keep his license if he informs all future employers in writing he won't dispense birth control pills and the steps he would take to make sure a patient has access to medication. He was also found liable for the cost of the proceedings against him, which came to about $20,000.
He was working as a substitute pharmacist at a Menomonie Kmart in 2002 when a University of Wisconsin-Stout student came in to refill her birth control pills. Noesen testified he asked her whether she would use the pills for contraception, and he refused to help her or return the prescription when she answered yes.
Noesen told the board he is a devout Roman Catholic. He said he refused to refill the pills or release her prescription to another pharmacy because he didn't want to commit a sin.
Idiot.
I'm all for the right for the pharmacist to refuse to dispense the drugs, but believe he should have let her transfer the prescription to another pharmacy.
"wouldn't transfer her prescription elsewhere"
Line too far, I suppose.
Wow. So in other professions, you can say "that's against my beliefs" but not when you are a pharmacist, because every pharmacist MUST fulfill ALL medications, no matter what?
And this was for regular birth control pills, too. Feh!
So, it's gonna cost him $20,000. Maybe he can take up a collection from the 20 people who oppose the use of birth control by people other than themselves.
That is too far.
". . . because every pharmacist MUST fulfill ALL medications, no matter what?"
No, he could have just handed her the prescription back and said go get someone else to kill your baby.
I wonder when this is going to branch off to other drugs. What about hypertension when the person is 300+ lbs? Is the pharmacist going to say "I won't fill this so get off your fat lazy a$$ and exercise"?
Birth control pills are not really something that belongs in the legal system.
Though the way I see it and contrary to what Planned Parenthood and the Libs want kids my age to believe, getting contraceptives can never be a right like the right to freedom of speech; it's a privilege that Liberal activist Courts have made a sacred cow.
The fact is that WI's law protecting the pharmacy profession from being forced to deliver such drugs was overruled as a result of Griswold and Eisenstadt. So, Mr. Noesen couldn't legally refuse to issue the drugs, despite the clear-cut personal conflict it presented.
Plus, it's equally true that said young lady could have simply walked away, gone down Hwy. 25 to another pharmacy, and picked up her drugs.
If I don't like the service from one drug store, there's another five minutes away. The first store just loses my business, that's all. In fact, during last school year, that's pretty much what I did when the service at SHS was crappy. Yeah, it's a ten minute walk. Big deal.
I used to go to UW-Stout last school year. There are plenty of pharmacies in Menomonie for drugs, where I'm sure anyone who wants contraceptives can get them. (Though, since I'm a guy, and a conservative, and a Catholic, I really don't have a good reason to find out definitively...)
At the same time, Mr. Noesen didn't have to act the way he did, either. So, what could have been a simple refusal and taking-business-somewhere-else turns into a classic example of immaturity from both the college student and Mr. Noesen.
Like what professions?
Contraceptives are a legal product. He was not the owner of his pharmacy. He was an employee. He cant refuse to provide what his employer has for sale just like employees at McDonalds cant refuse to serve Big Macs because they are vegetarians. If you cant do the job, and selling contraceptives is part of the job, then you find a pharmacy where that isnt required or you open your own. Hell we are not even talking the morning afer pill, just regular birth control pills. Geez is the guy going to cut holes in all the condoms too?
He was refusing to give her birth control pills, not the day after pill.
As a Roman Catholic that is still contributing to some else's sin.
No she couldnt. The a-hole pharmacist wouldnt give her the prescription back. At most pharmacies, if one pharmacist wont prepare the prescription, another will and that is how its handled. But you cant say i wont do it and no one at else can here or anywhere else because I just ate your prescription. Screw you. The same A-hole would then have a fit when the mother got pregnant and needed an abortion.
Birth control generates controversy... but what about Viagra? Certainly not in any sense life or even health saving, a moral argument could be made against using the limited resources of our medical system to promote hedonism - a morally abhorent practice to some...
One wouldn't send conscientious objectors into a warzone, maybe pharmacists who have objections (of any moral kind) to the drugs that are legal and medically approved, should decline to work at places that will get the full spectrum of customers...
"Plus, it's equally true that said young lady could have simply walked away, gone down Hwy. 25 to another pharmacy, and picked up her drugs."
The story says he wouldn't give her the prescription so she could do that. That's probably the thing that got him in most trouble. It's one thing to say you're not going to fill a prescription, it's another entirely to not allow it to be filled by anyone.
Ah so.
Same principle applies, however.
(As an aside, one can prescribe a larger amount of certain birth control pills to have the same effect as the "day-after" pill. Reading between the lines, that could be a distinct possibility here.)
I wasn't aware KMart's pharmacy was a Roman Catholic pharmacy.
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